Curiously, inside the academy, more and more, life seems to imitate Linda Ronstadt.

Uh, let me explain.

Back in July, we wrote that if you're a Republican and/or fundementalist Christian, Linda doesn't want you in her audience:

In a gushing profile in The San Diego Union-Tribune she's quoted as saying:

"It's a real conflict for me when I go to a concert and find out somebody in the audience is a Republican or fundamental Christian. It can cloud my enjoyment. I'd rather not know."

The remark goes uncommented on by the paper.

Whatever happened to the days when music was supposed to be a unifying force? Bringing people together? Plug in any other phrases in place of "Republican or fundamental Christian" and imagine what the outrage would be.

So why isn't this paper crying foul?

Possibly because a similar sort of stereotyping is just fine in college as well. I was struck by the similarity of Ronstadt's quote with the one in the piece that Glenn Reynolds linked to today by Mary Ann Dellinger. Dellinger is an associate professor of Spanish at Virginia Military Institute. During a recent cocktail party of college professors from a variety of schools, she was confronted by one who noticed her uniform and nonchalantly remarked:

“I think it would be far too stressful for me to teach children of Republicans,” the Multiculturalist commented over cappuccino in Padua, after expounding on profiling as a bigoted, narrow-minded policy of Eurocentrists.

I was tempted to ask if children of Republicans, indeed, young Republicans themselves or — God forbid — conservative professors were forced to stay in a closet of their own at her college, whose mission statement, after all, stipulates diversity in regards to race, gender and religion, but makes no mention of political affiliation. Would she have them wear a bright red R lest they enroll in her classes or sit next to her in the faculty lounge?

I shuddered to think how any of us would react to a colleague making the same statement, substituting party preference with an ethnic, gender or religious denomination: “It would be far to stressful for me to teach children of a gay couple … to teach children of Arab immigrants … to teach children of “fill-in-the- blank” (then run for cover). Yet no one else at our table seemed to view her statement as bigoted or even the slightest bit outrageous...

Just like the editors at The Union-Tribune this past summer, strangely enough.